


this borrowed soul

by ChaiFighter



Series: kinder fates than these [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ben Solo Lives, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, M/M, Movie: Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Post-Canon, The Rest of Their Lives
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2020-01-06
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:41:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21926116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChaiFighter/pseuds/ChaiFighter
Summary: Ben Solo lives. This is what happens after.
Relationships: Poe Dameron/Finn, Rey/Ben Solo
Series: kinder fates than these [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1593445
Comments: 79
Kudos: 503
Collections: TROS Reylo Fix-it Fics, The Rise of Skywalker: Fix-It Fic Edition





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Came home after ROS and this fell out of me faster than just about anything else I've written. It's still going. I would try to complete it first before posting, but I do that I may never post it, and god would I regret never posting it. 
> 
> Follows TROS with only one change: Ben reserved a tiny amount of life force within himself, rather than giving every bit to Rey.

As she drags his limp body back to the X-wing, she has to stop every ten steps to check his breathing. She doesn’t _want_ to stop--she wants to get out of this Force-forsaken base. But he is so still, and she is impossibly alive. It’s difficult to convince herself that the exchange didn’t simply swap their places.

She makes her painstaking way back through the dark corridors of Exegol and has to pause for rest after raising the massive elevator slab threatens to topple her spent body. The Force throbs in her like a bruise, present but exhausted, a muscle she had not realized she could strain. Overhead, Star Destroyers fall like comets, trailing green clouds and engine smoke. The Resistance pulls away one ship at a time and she can’t keep herself from smiling–the Galaxy answered the call after all. 

She heaves him into the X-wing cockpit, mindful of his injuries, and is briefly at a loss for where to put him; the space was not designed for two people. She settles for lying him on his side on the tiny ledge behind the pilot’s seat, torso curved behind her back, long legs dangling beside her right shoulder. It won’t be comfortable if he wakes, but at least she can reach all her controls. She breathes deeply and kneels on the seat to press her forehead to his, one hand buried in the sweaty strings of his hair. She remembers the break of dawn, the smile that cracked across his features as Light surged from the very pores of his being. He looked like someone else, someone new that she had longed to meet her entire life, before she even knew he existed.

She turns around, puts on her helmet.

She came here alone. Ben Solo and Rey–just Rey–fly back.

–––

It takes several minutes for anyone to realize there’s a second person in her ship. Those several minutes are wonderful–she clutches Finn and Poe like an anchor, lets herself sink into the wonder of their survival. It is only now that she realizes the true depth of her fortune on this day. She lived, her little family lived, her… Ben lived. In the face of the toll on Exegol, the odds of any of those things individually was astronomical. That all three have come to pass can only be the will of the Force.

“Thank you,” Finn is murmuring over her shoulder, hardly loud enough to hear. “Thank you, thank you.”

_Yes_ , she thinks, holding them both tighter. _Thank you._

“What happened?” Finn asks the second they can bring themselves to stand back. Their arms are still entwined, all three of them standing in an awkward little circle, aware that it’s odd but unwilling to let go. “I know something must have been going on with all that lightning, but we couldn’t tell a thing from the air.”

Rey feels her own face fall. “It’s… There’s a lot I have to tell you.”

“That’d be why we’re asking, yeah,” says Poe. She squeezed his arm in retaliation. 

“Not here,” she says. “Somewhere private. And… I think I need some time.”

“Of course,” says Poe. He claps her on the shoulder, pulls her in for one more hug. “Get some rest. It’s been a hell of a day.”

“It has,” says Rey with a weak smile. Poe doesn’t seem to notice anything amiss as he is pulled away by a mob of pilots looking for their General, but when she turns back she finds that Finn is looking at her oddly. She should have known he’d see through her.

“I need your help with something,” she says. Their hands are still clasped together.

“Anything,” Finn promises.

“Ben Solo is in Luke’s X-wing. Help me move him?”

The ensuing cry of alarm doesn’t start a riot, but it’s a near thing.

––– 

“Kylo Ren,” says Finn. It’s the seventh time he has done so in the last fifteen minutes. “I can’t believe you brought back Kylo Ren.”

They are in Rey’s rarely-used quarters in the recesses of the Resistance base. Ben is laid out on her bed. He’s too long for it; his feet hang off the end. They had to smuggle him here on a supply cart, buried beneath a massive stack of scrap parts gathered from various damaged ships. There are still metal shavings in his hair. Rey resists the urge to comb them out.

“It’s Ben,” Rey corrects, also for the seventh time. “And he saved my life, Finn, I couldn’t just leave him.” 

This is, of course, a vast oversimplification, but there’s no need to get into the whole ‘dyad’ thing yet. 

“You keep saying that,” says Finn. “How did he do that, exactly? It better have been spectacular.”

“I was dead,” she says.

“Yes, you said–”

“No,” she says. “Not _good as_ dead. He traded enough of his own life force to bring me back from _being_ dead.”

There’s a moment for that to sink in.

“What?” Finn’s eyes are wide. “You– You–” He can’t bring himself to say the word. “What happened?”

Rey sinks onto the mattress by Ben’s hip. He hasn’t stirred once, not while they surreptitiously loaded him into the cart, not while they shuffled him onto the bunk. His Force presence, so blindingly bright only hours ago, is so faint she can hardly see it. She’d think him dead if not for the nigh-imperceptible rise and fall of his chest.

“So much, Finn,” she says, voice cracking. “So much has happened.”

He makes as if to sit beside her, thinks better of it on seeing Ben and pulls up her rickety desk chair instead. He takes her hand. 

“Tell me,” he says. 

She tells him. The tears begin as soon as she has to mention her parents, and she can barely get the words out to explain about Palpatine. About her _grandfather_. About the terrible task she was given, how she almost carried it out–how Ben saved her from it. 

She doesn’t tell him about the Dark, about the vision on Kef Bir. She doesn’t mention the way the pain sang in her, the way she skidded in stutter-steps toward its call. She also doesn’t mention the way _Ben_ sang in her, and how she leaned toward him too. She certainly does not mention the kiss.

“And then I was alive again,” she says. “And he was Light, Finn. I swear to you, it was as bright as anything I’ve ever seen in the Force.”

Finn’s brow is furrowed. “And then?”

“He passed out, and I got us both to the ship, and we came back here.”

“...Wow,” he says after a long pause. “You’re right. That’s a lot.”

“Sorry,” she says.

“Do you think he’ll wake up?”

It’s the same question that has plagued her since he tipped backward in her arms, Force imprint fading so quickly she thought he was dying. What are the rules of healing, what are the rules of their bond? Does life force replenish? Is it a finite supply? He had ripped open the floodgates and poured himself into her, and only his unconsciousness had stemmed the tide. Could he have emptied himself utterly, if he’d been awake a moment longer? Has he already done so?

Can he regain what he gave her, or is this all that is left?

“I don’t know,” she says. 

“And if he does…” Finn doesn’t finish the sentence, but the questions are clear. If he does, will he still be Ben? If he does, where will you go?

“I don’t know,” she says again. Finn squeezes her hand tighter. 

“You know,” he says, “you could still–”

“Not an option.” 

“You didn’t even hear what I was going to say!”

“You were going to suggest killing him. Or arresting him.”

“I was not!” 

“Right,” she says flatly.

“Right!”

“...”

“...You’re sure you won’t arrest him?”

She sighs. “Very sure.”

“It’s just, it’s Kylo Ren.”

“Completely sure.”

“Okay.” Finn raises his free hand in surrender. “Just checking.” He glances sideways to Ben’s slack face, then does a clear double take. “Hang on, did his scar disappear?”

“When I healed him on Kef Bir,” she confirms. 

“Whoa.”

“Yeah.”

Tentatively, she curls an arm around his shoulders and feels him ease beneath it. He grips her hand tighter.

“I’m so glad you’re alive,” he murmurs.

“You too,” she says through the terrible surge of relief in her throat. “I’m sorry for running off without you.”

“Which time?” he asks dryly. She winces.

“All of them.”

“Hm. Apology accepted. Just don’t do it again.”

“I’ll try,” she says. Finn mercifully does not point out that it’s not a promise. “Please don’t Poe about him?” 

Poe, for all their strange, quarrelsome friendship, would likely not hesitate to toss Ben in a cell. Finn wouldn’t either if left to his own devices, but she can trust him to trust her judgement, at least until given good reason to disbelieve her story of Ben’s return to the Light.

Finn sighs and pulls back to look at her. “Rey.”

“I don’t need you to lie, just don’t mention–”

“Rey,” he says. “What’s your plan if you don’t tell him?”

_Keep Ben right here_ , she almost says. _Keep him with me, and as long as I’m with him it will all be fine._

“If R… If he doesn’t wake up soon, he’s going to need medical treatment,” says Finn. “Actually, he probably needs it now, regardless. Pretty sure stuff’s broken.”

“I’ll heal him,” she says, but it comes out less certain than she’d like. She would have done it immediately on Exegol, but she had known instinctively that his life force was too tenuously settled in her to risk returning any of it. It feels more stable now, but there’s still a slip-sliding sensation when she concentrates too hard, like her borrowed soul could rattle loose if she gave it a reason.

“I get why you don’t want to tell Poe,” says Finn gently, “I do. But I’m not sure keeping it secret is going to be an option.”

She fights down her immediate instinct to clutch Ben closer, to wrap herself around him and hide him so nothing can touch him again, and considers the consequences of keeping his survival secret. She’ll have to lie in her account of the battle, either say that Ben died or that he never came to Exegol at all. She’ll have to trust in her own ability to treat his injuries, which certainly include multiple broken bones and probably any number of other, less visible things. 

She’ll have to lie to Poe indefinitely. She’ll have to make _Finn_ lie to Poe indefinitely.

There’s been enough secret-keeping today.

“You’re right,” she says, though her stomach is sinking. “It’s not.”

Finn squeezes her hand. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” she tells him. “Thank you.”

“Yeah,” he says, folding her in again. “Don’t mention it.”

––– 

Half an hour later finds her in a private briefing room with Poe, rehearsing her opening gambit and wishing desperately to be anywhere else. She’s exhausted, lightheaded, and unspeakably grimy, but she knows that she needs to get this done as soon as possible, if only to get Ben into the medical wing sooner rather than later. 

“Rey,” says Poe. His brow creases with concern– rightfully so. Everyone topside is still celebrating. No one in their right mind is concerned with debriefing yet. “You know, we can do this tomorrow.”

“No,” she says. “We can’t. You might want to sit down.”

“...Okay,” he says slowly, “I’m not sure I like where this is going.”

“Sit down, Poe,” she says, sharper.

“Alright, sitting!” He drops into a chair across the briefing table from her. “What’s going on?”

“Right.” She breathes. “So, I’m Palpatine’s granddaughter, I died on Exegol until Ben Solo brought me back to life by pushing most of his life force into my dead body, and also Ben Solo is here, on this base, in my room. Which of these items would you like to address first?”

He blinks at her for a long moment, jaw slack, eyebrows about ready to leave atmosphere.

“Just to be clear, by Ben Solo, you mean–”

“Kylo Ren, yes.”

“Is on my base.”

“Yes.”

“Right now.”

“Yes.”

_“What the fuck, Rey?”_

“He saved my life?” she says weakly. 

“He tried to kill you! He tried to kill all of us! Repeatedly! Succeeded, a lot!”

“...Yes,” she says. “But he also helped me kill Palpatine.”

“By–what was it? _Pushing his life force into your corpse?_ Did I hear that part right?”

“Yes,” says Rey. She almost adds, ‘Also by stopping me from killing Palpatine and becoming a Sith Empress,’ but realizes just in time that, while stopping her from killing Palpatine the wrong way did help her eventually kill Palpatine the right way, it’s a rather more complex argument than she needs right now. Instead she says, “And by fighting beside me.”

“You– He– What–” Poe gets to his feet, pacing furiously and cursing all the way. It’s an impressive tirade, a combination of Basic and some other language which, even though Rey can’t speak it, is clearly filthy. This goes on for several minutes before Poe plunks himself back down in his chair, one hand braced on the back of it, wild-eyed. 

“Hang on, what was that about you being Palpatine’s granddaughter?”

“I’ll tell you, but first I need Ben moved discreetly from my quarters to the medical wing,” says Rey.

“What? No.”

“Poe.”

“No, Rey! Why should we help that piece of shit?”

“We would all be dead without him and he’s only in a coma because he dumped half his soul into me to save my life?”

“...Okay,” he says. “You may have a point. Half a point. A very small fraction of a valid point.”

“Please, Poe,” she says. “I’ll tell you everything, just please, help him first.”

There is a long, tense silence in which Rey calculates how quickly she could make it to her quarters from here, whether she could get there and haul Ben out to some abandoned ship before anyone made enough sense of the sounding alarm to stop her.

“Fine,” Poe says at last. “But then you tell me the full story, clearly and chronologically. None of this shock value crap.”

“Done,” she agrees instantly. “Thank you.”

Poe pushes up from the table. “You are not welcome. Let’s go move your pet dickbag to Medical, then.” 

Rey closes her eyes against the relief that threatens to topple her, and rises to walk with him.

––– 

Ben looks smaller in a bed designed to hold someone of his height. She almost misses the comedic largeness of his feet off the end of her bunk. At least then he didn’t look so fragile. 

They could not afford to put him in a bacta tank, lest he be seen and recognized. Instead his broken bones are set in bacta casts, slower-acting but just as effective in the long term. There are more of them than Rey had realized, and she feels a brief stab of guilt for her rough handling on Exegol. She’s certain that her jostling must have knocked things even looser than they’d already been. 

His hair is strewn across the pillow, still matted with sweat and blood. No one has washed it. Rey isn’t surprised. While his position as the beloved General Organa’s son had found him a willing medic, there is little love lost between the Resistance and the erstwhile Supreme Leader, and so long as he isn’t hiding an injury beneath it, the medic has better things to do. Still, as she tucks a wayward strand behind his ear she resolves to clean it herself soon. She’d like to run a hand through it without having to wash afterward.

She’s already taking these liberties, thinking like he’s hers. It’s so strange when she steps back to think about it, that they were enemies mere days ago. Now she’s thinking about where to get a basin and rinse water, thinking about whether or not to kiss him when he wakes up, thinking about where they may go after this to live out the rest of their lives. Thinking in certainties, as though he’s been hers for years, for forever. It makes no sense, and yet she can find no other way to be. 

She reaches out through the Force and winces as her entire body throbs. Though she may be physically fine–Ben’s gift at work–she’s overtaxed her Force abilities for the day. She hadn’t realized it was possible, but she figures if anything could strain a person’s Force sense, it would be something like what happened a few hours ago. (Was it really just a few hours ago?) 

She sits down on the edge of the bed and cups a hand on his cheek, pressing her forehead to his. She persists through the ache until she catches the golden thread of his connection to her and follows it back to its flickering source. He’s alive in there, she can tell that much, but his presence in the Force is no stronger than it was a day ago. 

She swallows her sorrow. It is hardly time to grieve yet. Perhaps in a week. Perhaps in a month. Perhaps in a year, if he is still this tiny candle and nothing more. But not yet.

She allows herself to slump completely against the bed, upper half on the mattress, legs dangling off the side. She managed to shower quickly and change her clothes while the medic was dressing Ben’s wounds, but she couldn’t bring herself to rest until she saw that he was fine. Now, exhaustion pulses over her in waves. Her eyes flutter shut as she slides one hand into Ben’s, marvels at how cozy it feels. 

She wakes up sixteen hours later curled up beside him, forehead pressed against his shoulder, knees bumping his hip. Someone has tucked a blanket around her, pointedly leaving Ben uncovered. The gesture has Finn written all over it. She lays there for a moment and breathes, taking Ben in, taking in the Force that swirls gently around him, pulsing and gorgeously alive.

_You are right where you are supposed to be,_ sings the Force.

_Please, please go eat something,_ counters her stomach. 

The Force will be here when she gets back, she thinks reluctantly, and swings herself out of bed. 


	2. Chapter 2

Life continues on Ajan Kloss. The revelries last for days. Rey attends celebration after celebration, making the proper appearances expected of one of the Resistance’s best. She does enjoy the parties. The Force sings with collective joy, the food is good, and everyone she meets is extraordinarily pleased to make her acquaintance. She learns to dance, she learns endless names, she learns a lot about alcohol. It’s good. Restful. She’ll miss it when she leaves.

“Hey, Rey,” Poe calls to her across a crowd. It has been three days since Exegol. The slices of sky visible through the trees have softened in anticipation of night, and the bonfires are just being lit for the evening. The celebration is looking to be tamer tonight. More of the celebrants depart for their home systems with each day, and while they still outnumber the core Resistance five to one, Rey is certain that within a week they will all have returned, leaving behind only those who would deconstruct the base before finally moving onward with their lives. 

The end of the Resistance is nearer than ever, and victory is what will kill it. She knows this was always the goal, but it’s a bit melancholy nonetheless.

“Come here!” Poe calls again, and this time Rey snaps out of her reverie. She tugs at Finn’s arm, but on seeing Poe his face does something odd.

“You go,” he says. “I have… something to do. Over there.”

Rey opens her mouth to protest the obvious lie, but Finn is already fleeing into the throng and she is left alone to weave her way through the crowd towards Poe. He is standing in a circle with several people, none of whom Rey recognizes, but who she can guess from their dress and bearing are probably pilots. 

“Rey!” cheers Poe, tossing an arm over her shoulders. He is very, very drunk. “Just the woman I wanted to see! These are Thresher, Woopi, and Hoss. They’re pilots from Yvanilsa. Thrasher, Woopi, Hoss, this is Rey!”

Each of the pilots makes their own introduction, which is fortunate, or else Rey would have had to carefully avoid using Thresher’s name for the rest of their acquaintance in case it was actually Thrasher. They seem pleasant enough people, if rather raucous in the way pilots tend to be. They are certainly less drunk than her friend.

“Miss Rey,” says Woopi, “is it true that you fought Palpatine on Exegol?”

Woopi knows it’s true, of course. The Resistance has released an official retelling of the victory which includes a carefully stripped version of Rey’s actions on Exegol. She and Poe had labored over the details of it once she gave him her account, what to tell and what to leave. The result was a version of events that, while factually true, left out Ben’s involvement and Rey’s bloodline entirely.

As far as the Galaxy is concerned, Rey defeated the former Emperor singlehandedly. Everyone knows she fought Palpatine–what they want is her personal account of it.

“It’s true,” she says, and she launches into the story she’s told dozens of times now–how she deflected the Force lightning with her crossed sabers, with the strength of Luke and Leia and every Jedi before. It makes for excellent retelling at parties on its own, but she can never help wondering what people’s faces would do if she told them the trick she and Ben pulled with Luke’s lightsaber.

“That’s amazing,” says Woopi. Their eyes are wide. “Really amazing, Miss Rey.”

“What’s the Force like?” asks Thresher eagerly. “Can you show us?”

“It’s so cool,” says Poe, shaking her slightly with the hand he still has on her shoulder. “Rey, do the thing!”

“What thing?”

“The Force!”

“Do the whole Force,” she says dryly. 

“Yeah!” says Poe. “The whole Force!”

Rey considers, shrugs, and levitates Poe’s cup out of his hands. Her connection to the Force has recovered over the last few days, and a party trick like this hardly even stings. The three pilots ooh and ahh appropriately as she streams the liquid from the glass and coils it in the air, twisting it into shapes. When she is finished she plucks the glass from the air, streams the drink back into it, and downs the thing herself.

“Hey!” Poe protests. “That was mine!”

“Oops,” says Rey blandly, blinking rapidly as the burn stings at her throat. She’ll never get used to that. “Mine now.”

“No fair,” Poe mutters. 

“Love and war,” she says. His face scrunches in distaste.

“Both suck,” he proclaims. “Who needs ‘em?” He cuffs her amiably on the shoulder. “I’m gonna get more drinks, don’t go away!” 

Poe ambles off. Rey frowns after him but doesn’t pursue, makes small talk with the pilots for lack of anywhere else to be. She shouldn’t have had that drink; she can already feel herself growing tired. She wishes she were somewhere quiet, preferably with Finn. Or Ben. She’d take either right now. 

That’s when she feels it.

Their bond crackles like an electric shock, and for a single, terrifying moment, she thinks he is dying. The blood drains from her face. She latches frantically onto the tenuous thread of their connection, yanking hand over hand to check the opposite end. 

He’s there. He’s alive. And his presence has _grown._

She turns it around from every angle, and every way she looks she sees the same thing. He is brighter than he was a moment before. Not a full presence—not even close—but no longer flickering. The candle flame holds steady, pulsing like a heartbeat.

“Excuse me,” she says to the pilots, not bothering to wait for their replies. She darts through the crowd, trying to make her path look casual but knowing she’s going too fast, deciding she does not care.

He’s healing. He’s really healing. 

She doesn’t have to go check on him; she knows even from here that he is still deeply comatose, and likely will be for a long while yet. She knows this, and it does not matter. She needs to see him. She forces herself to look casual and purposeful as she walks the halls, nodding to those she passes, until she slips into Ben’s room in the remote depths of the base. 

She sits in the chair that was brought here for her, and she takes his hand. The moment their skin connects, the Force sings, resonant and astounding. His little light is still terrifyingly small, and there is no conscious thought on the other end of their bond, but he is there, and he is as much a part of her as he has ever been.

She places one hand over her mouth to ward off her tears. The smile seems to shine straight through it. 

———

Rey returns to the party feeling light and careless, like the victory has finally sunk in properly after days of interminable waiting. This feeling lasts roughly two dances, before she is brought abruptly back down to earth by familiar raised voices.

“Fine!” Poe shouts. He is nose to nose with Finn, slurring his words. “Fine, go fuck off to the outer reaches for all I care!”

“I will,” says Finn viciously. “After all, it’s not like I have any reason to stay here!”

“Oh, no reason, huh? _No reason?”_

“Yeah, Poe, no damn reason.”

Poe’s face is scarlet, and Rey decides that whatever discussion they’re having, it should not be happening while he is so obviously drunk. She moves to intercept, but before she gets there, Finn steps back. When he speaks, his voice is lower. 

“You got something to say to me Dameron? Say it.”

Poe says nothing. Finn nods sharply, expression twisting. 

“That’s what I thought,” he says. He shoulders his way through the crowd and vanishes behind a clump of partygoers.

Poe deflates before her eyes, flushed face sagging with regret. She takes him by the elbow. 

“You’re done for the night,” she tells him. He doesn’t argue. She all but drags him to his quarters, where she shoves him through the door and slams it shut behind them.

“What the hell was that about, Dameron?”

“Nothing,” he says meanly, tugging clumsily at his jacket. Rey makes a wordless noise of frustration and yanks it off for him. 

“I mean it, Poe. Does this have to do with why you and Finn have been going at each other like chivvy birds lately?”

“None of your business,” he says, but his face is already crumpling. He sits heavily on the edge of the bed, face in his hands. “Go away.”

Rey presses her lips together. “Really? You’re really going to do this?”

“Rey,” he says into his palms, voice wet. “I don’t want to talk about it. Please go.”

“No.” 

“Rey.”

“Poe.”

“Rey!”

“That’s my name, yes.”

He rolls over onto his side, facing away from her. Like a grownup. Rey snorts. 

“Okay. Fine. Let me know when you’re feeling thirty-two again.” She makes for the door.

“Rey?”

She stops.

“I’m sorry.” 

“Tell him yourself,” she says, and shuts the door.

——— 

She finds Finn in the shadow of the base’s outer wall on the slope overlooking the clearing. The bonfires are piled high for the night’s festivities, but Finn is staring up instead, through the leaves to the planet’s two moons, pale against the deepening sky. 

“Room for one more?” she asks. Finn jumps, but relaxes when he sees who it is.

“Yeah, go for it.”

She settles herself beside him, knees tucked up against her chest. They sit in silence as music and laughter drift up from below. 

“What happened?” she asks finally. 

Finn shakes his head. “It’s nothing.”

“Sure didn’t sound like nothing.”

“Well, it was.”

Rey tips her head back against the building and closes her eyes. She can feel Ben from here, that faint glow somewhere far behind her. 

“I’m serious, Finn. What’s going on?”

He breathes for a long moment, exhales slowly. 

“You know how Poe and I have been…”

“Snippy,” Rey supplies.

“...Arguing, for the last few weeks?”

“Kind of hard to miss.”

He sighs. “I, uh. I tried to kiss him, a month or so ago. And he turned me down.”

Rey feels her own jaw drop. She sits bolt upright.

“He did _not.”_

Finn nods. “Yeah, he did.”

“Oh my god.”

“Yeah.”

“Oh my god!”

“I know.”

Rey flips frantically through her memories, trying to fit them to a world where Poe is not, in fact, head over heels for Finn. It doesn’t work. It just doesn’t. The way he looks, the way he smiles… 

“Finn, I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah, me too.”

Maybe Rey just doesn’t know enough about these things. Maybe she’s been seeing something that isn’t there. But it’s hard to believe that the entire Resistance fighter pilot squad would have a pool going if Rey had been imagining things.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

He shrugs defensively. “We kind of had bigger things to worry about.”

That’s a terrible argument, and Rey will call him on it later when she’s not in a state of shock. “Do you think he meant it?” she asks faintly.

“I think that he meant what he said at the time,” says Finn. “I think he may be reconsidering now. Problem is, I can’t sit around waiting for him to figure himself out.”

He hesitates, looking at her sideways. 

“Jannah and the others are asking me to go with them,” he says. “To find any other stormtroopers left, see if we can help them. Help them deprogram, find them places to live, stuff like that.”

Below them, in the crowd, someone lets out a shriek of laughter that carries clearly up to where they sit. 

“You’re leaving,” Rey says.

“Maybe,” he says, avoiding her eyes. “I haven’t said yes yet.”

“You want to,” she hears herself saying. “I can tell.”

“You’re here.”

“But you want to,” she repeats.

“...I do,” he admits. “I really do.”

She studies him. She remembers how he was when they first met, unencumbered for the first time in his life, awkward in his personhood but already beginning to flourish. She imagines the other stormtroopers out there, waiting for someone to tell them, _you are a person, and you have a name._

“Poe wants me to stay,” says Finn. “He just doesn’t want to have to say it.”

“He doesn’t get a vote,” says Rey. She is not feeling particularly charitable toward Poe Dameron in this moment. 

Finn laughs. “That’s what I told him. And anyway, we all need something to do now that it’s over. I think this is mine.” He smiles crookedly. “I can feel it.”

He’s right. The Force rings with it. 

Somehow, when Rey thought of separation, she always assumed she would leave first, that that when Ben woke, she would be the one to leave Finn and Poe behind. Instead, it is Finn who has found a path that calls him away from her. She probably won’t see him for months, even years at a time.

Her oldest, truest friend, with her through everything, and yet it’s only now when they have won that the galaxy shifts beneath their feet. 

She wraps her arms around him, clinging as though it might keep him here. She can already feel the ache of his absence, keen and deep and cutting.

“I’ll miss you,” she says.

“I’m not leaving yet. It’ll be at least a week, not until after the General’s service.”

“Still,” she says. “I’ll miss you.”

His arms come up around her back, clutching just as tightly.

“Yeah,” he says into her hair. “I’ll miss you too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone wants the reasoning behind my angle on stormpilot here, I'd be happy to discuss. (They'll be disgustingly cute later, I promise!)


	3. Chapter 3

That third night of celebrations marks a turning point, and at dawn on the fourth day of a free galaxy, the exodus begins. Plans are made for the homecoming or temporary hosting of Resistance fighters on various allied planets, and the deconstruction of the Ajan Kloss base is gotten underway. In normal circumstances such a task could be accomplished in less than a day—the base was designed to be portable—but sentiment finds many of its residents lingering, reluctant to part. It is only the prospect of General Organa’s memorial service, set to be held in three days on Chandrila, that gets most of them on their way.

Rey’s personal possessions fit themselves neatly into two bags: the Jedi tomes, Luke and Leia’s lightsabers, ties and a brush for her hair, several changes of clothes. Most of the clothes had been gifts from Leia. She spends a miserable minute trying to decide which of the precious things she can bear to abandon before remembering she doesn’t need to be able to fit her life into a single rucksack anymore. 

Finn and Poe are no longer on speaking terms after their argument at the party and Finn’s official decision to leave with Jannah and her company. Rey does her best to reserve judgement, but she can’t help her own bias toward Finn, and it makes conversations with Poe stilted and uncomfortable. She finds herself digging determinedly into travel preparations as an avoidance tactic, and is glad of the distraction once she realizes exactly how much needs to be done to prepare the Falcon for long-term housing of a coma patient.

She had told Chewie of Ben’s survival immediately after she told Poe. She figured she owed him the knowledge that the son and murderer of his captain made it off Exegol alive. He visited Ben only once, radiating anguish into the Force, and told her the next day that he was going to stay with Lando for a while. He insisted that the Falcon stay with her, and no amount of argument could change his mind. 

While she is immeasurably grateful for the gift, she can’t help but feel guilty outfitting it to host its captain’s killer, so she makes the alterations alone, with grudging advice from Rhys, the medic overseeing Ben’s treatment as a debt to the late General. There’s equipment to be installed, bacta stores to load, care schedules to learn, an entire room to repurpose. By the end of the two-day disassembly period she is barely ready, and then there comes the matter of moving Ben back out of the base without being seen.

“Finn,” she calls on approach, waving. He looks up from his datapad and waves in return, handing the pad off with a few words to a nearby member of Company 77 and meeting her halfway. “You have a minute?” she asks.

“Sure,” he says, though by the look on his face he already suspects she’s up to something. “What for?”

“I could use some help shifting a scrap cart.”

It takes a moment, but he gets it. “Damn it, Rey.”

She flashes a sheepish smile. “I’ll help you catalog your stuff after?”

He spends a moment to look pointedly conflicted, then caves like they both knew he would. “Fine. Where we headed?”

They wheel Ben out of the base the same way they got him in, buried in a heap of scrap like an oversized bit of machinery. The journey is somewhat more nerve-wracking without the celebratory haze to distract passers-by. Rey comforts herself with the fact that besides them, only Poe, Chewie, and the medic even know Ben is on the base. Even if someone were to stop them, they could hardly know what they are carrying.

They wheel the cart up the Falcon’s gangplank, first with some difficulty, then with none at all when Rey gives up on pretending she’s restricted by the laws of physics and levitates the thing the rest of the way in. Ben is soon situated in the bunk that has been set aside for him, with all the various beeps and whirrs that ensure his body remains functional while his spirit recovers.

Privately, Rey suspects that much of the equipment is unnecessary. The Force has taken a strange shape around Ben for the last several days, like a gentle cocoon in the midst of its currents. If she were to remove the feeding tubes entirely, there’s a good chance his body would remain just as it is, held in patient stasis for its occupant’s return. She won’t risk it if she does not have to, of course, but it’s a comforting thought nonetheless.

“It’s so weird to see him like this,” says Finn.

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, vulnerable? Non-terrifying?”

Rey forgets sometimes that Finn has, in his way, known Ben for much longer than she has. He grew up with stories of the fearsome Knights of Ren and their vicious, volatile leader, and he served on a ship beneath Kylo Ren’s command. When Rey met Ben, he was already beginning to unravel; her very presence had already begun to tug at his seams. 

Until Starkiller, most of the First Order hadn’t even seen the face beneath the mask. _She_ has known his face from their first conversation.

Is it wrong, to be a little thrilled by that?

“…A bit weird, yeah,” she agrees at length.

They watch the heart rate monitor in silence. Ben’s chest rises and falls.

“Well,” says Finn, clapping her on the shoulder, “you promised me help with the manifests.”

“Right,” says Rey. “Lead the way.” 

———

The flight to Chandrila is spent mostly at the dejarik board. Finn has elected to make the journey aboard the Falcon with Rey, Chewie, and the droids, and this results in endless rematches as he tries uselessly to overcome Chewie’s blatant cheating through legal play.

“Why don’t you just cheat too?” Rey asks once while Chewie is out of the room.

“Because I’ve tried,” Finn hisses back, expression hunted, “and I never, ever want to hear that sound again.”

Rey splits her time between spectating the games (mostly to egg them both on, Finn gets hilariously worked up) and sitting in the pilot’s chair watching the lights of hyperspace stream by. She can’t shake the knowledge of what waits at the end of the jump. Chandrila—one of the old capitals of the New Republic, Ben’s childhood home and now the site of Leia’s memorial.

She wishes Ben were awake for this. It was Leia’s death that brought him back, she knows he’d want to be at her funeral. Out of habit, she tugs on their connection. The result is the same as it was when she did it two minutes ago: while his presence in the Force is indeed growing, it does so with all the speed of a reluctant happobore. 

She suppresses a sigh of frustration. It’s the flight that’s making her so impatient, all this time with nothing to do but think. The waiting will be more bearable once she’s _doing_ something again. She’s decided that after the service she’s going to build herself a lightsaber. It should be a fairly involved project, tracking down the kyber crystals and reverse-engineering the build process from diagrams and the two sabers she has in her possession. Meticulous, mechanical—distracting.

Hyperspace dances outside the viewport. In four hours, they will reach Chandrila. 

Finn slinks into the cockpit and collapses into the copilot’s chair. By his expression, the last match went the way of all the others and he’s come here to lick his wounds.

“That bad?” Rey asks.

“I can pretty much pick out his cheats at this point,” Finn says. “I can even predict when he’s going to do it. I just can’t counter any of it.”

“Mhm,” she says. 

“I’ve played too much holochess, Rey. I see the pieces in my sleep.” 

“Well, you’re welcome to sit here and stare at the jumpstreamers until you see them instead.”

“Jumpstreamers?”

She gestures out the window. “The stars when they’re all stretched out like that.”

“I’ve never heard them called that before.”

That’s because Rey made up the term. Back on Jakku, when her only knowledge of hyperspace travel was from secondhand accounts and storytellers, she’d filled the monotony of her days imagining flying the ships she scavenged from. One traveler described the stars ’streaming past the viewport,’ and the idea found its way into her daydream narratives. It had been a wonderful surprise when the word matched the reality, especially when so little else had. 

“No,” she says finally. “You probably wouldn’t have.”

He studies her, then visibly lets it go. “Have you decided where you’re going after this?”

“Ilum,” she says. “According to the old Jedi texts, it’s the source of kyber crystals for lightsabers.”

Finn blinks. “Ilum? You’re sure that’s the name?”

“Yes,” she says slowly, uncertain of why he is asking.

“Do you have its coordinates?”

Oh, she does not like where this is going. “Just a region. I thought I'd follow the Force the rest of the way.”

“Rey,” says Finn, “I think that might be the planet they used for Starkiller.”

A few frantic mapsims later, Rey stares in disbelief at the readouts confirming Finn’s suspicion. 

“Everyone just called it Starkiller,” she says faintly. “How did I never hear its real name?”

“I bet the crystals were part of the firing system,” Finn muses. “They basically just lit a giant lightsaber all the way to Hosnian.”

Rey groans and sinks back in her chair, scrubbing at her eyes. Her tentative plans, sparse to begin with, are already back to the drawing board. 

“Where else am I supposed to find a saber crystal?” she wonders aloud. “They must exist in other places, but the texts only talk about Ilum.”

“Do you think you could ask Luke?”

Rey hasn’t spoken to Luke since her minor breakdown on Ahch-To. It’s as good a lead as any. “I’ll try,” she says.

“You know there’s nothing wrong with using their sabers, right? I mean, they gave them to you.”

It’s a question Rey has been asking herself since deciding to even make one. She doesn’t know how to articulate the need for something of her own—something that isn’t anyone’s legacy, anyone’s heirloom. Something that came from and was made for Rey, just Rey. 

She’ll never be a Palpatine, she’s not ready to be a Skywalker. She’d rather like to be something new.

“I’ll use them,” she says. “But I’d like to make one, all the same.” She tosses him a conspiratorial grin. “I think I might be able to make it double-sided.”

His eyebrows shoot up. “Like a staff?”

She nods. “And detachable.” She mimes pulling it apart into two swords. Finn’s eyebrows, if possible, crawl even higher.

“Okay,” he says. “Yeah, that’s a good reason to make a new one.”

“It may be a while,” she says. “There’s finding the crystals, finding the parts, and that’s not to mention if…” She trails off.

“If he wakes up,” Finn finishes. “You know you can talk about him to me, right? I’ve literally helped you sneak his body around twice, I’m not going to run off if you mention him.”

Of course she knows. That doesn’t mean she likes doing it. Finn may be her closest friend, and he may have grudgingly accepted Ben’s unconscious presence after he saved her on Exegol, but that doesn’t mean he’s actually accepted Ben’s change of heart. He’s worried that when Ben wakes up, he’ll do so as Kylo Ren, and he worries about her wellbeing when that happens. She can’t fault him for it, but it makes speaking about the future somewhat difficult. 

“I know, Finn,” she says. 

“It’s worth thinking about, though. What are you going to do when he’s back?”

Settle down. Somewhere green, she thinks. Take their time, side by side instead of lightyears apart. Learn each other in the normal ways, habits and favorite weather instead of the all-consuming _knowing_ of their connection. She thinks she’ll like Ben Solo. She thinks Ben Solo already likes her. It’s simply a matter of time and proximity, those precious things which they will finally have in plentiful supply. 

“I’m not sure,” she tells Finn. She cannot stop smiling. “We’ll figure it out.”

———

Even from space Chandrila is a beautiful planet, a swirl of green and blue with artful curls of cloud. It fills the viewport with a jolt as they drop out of hyperspace, and Rey is immediately hit with a wave of… _something_ through the Force. It is gone almost as soon as she feels it.

“Leia?” she whispers. 

There is no answer. She drags herself away from the pilot’s chair and goes to collect the others.

The memorial service is to be held in Hanna City, the planet’s capital, and it feels like half the galaxy has come to pay its respects. Leia Organa had been an instrumental figure in the Rebellion days, and an indomitable political force after that. Her popularity and influence far outstripped that of her brother, whose reclusion after the Battle of Yavin and eventual disappearance had made him almost more myth than man. 

Rey had known her mentor was a monolith. Somehow, looking down at the streets packed to bursting, it feels like she’d only ever seen a tiny fraction of her after all. 

She dresses herself in the clothes that Leia gave her, hooks both lightsabers in her belt, yanks her hair out of its ties and redoes it—the same style, this time with braids from either temple that sweep back into the buns. She looks like what Leia has made her.

Luke may have been her first teacher, but Leia had been her master.

They are met at the gangplank by a harried Chandrilan escort, who leads them to a hovertaxi that takes them to the city center. There’s an enormous building there, almost as wide as it is tall, and to Rey’s astonishment the inside of the building is one single, massive room. It’s shaped like a funnel and made of white stone, with expanding circular tiers for seating. The ceiling is an open top through which the morning sunlight streams, catching on the gold threads that shoot through the stone, igniting the whole room. 

It’s absolutely breathtaking. It’s also a bit much. Rey can just imagine Leia’s face—that sardonic little quirk of her lips, the one that says, “You’re ridiculous, but I’ll never tell you so.” She’d never say a word against it, would probably even appreciate it, and at the same time she’d think it absolutely absurd. 

The building is already full to bursting; the crowds in the streets are attendees who couldn’t fit inside. Rey and the rest are deposited by lift somewhere around the middle of the funnel, where special seating reservations were made for those who fought alongside the General in the core Resistance effort. The rest of the coliseum is full of other people Leia helped, people she may have never even met, whose gratitude fills the Force with such keen feeling that Rey feels her tears already beginning to well. She hurriedly blinks them back. 

The service itself is a series of speakers, each saying a short piece in tribute. There are politicians describing her work after the fall of the Empire, old soldiers from the Rebellion days describing the size of her presence even at nineteen. Poe says a few words as Leia’s successor in the Resistance. Chewie, Rey knows, had been asked to speak and had declined. Instead, Lando delivers a joint tribute to Leia and Han and the way they had loved each other, at once steady and tempestuous, the eye of each other’s storm.

Rey drinks in the stories that Leia had never had the time to share with her, and with every tale the lump in her throat grows. She wants to know how Leia would have told these tales. She wants to hear the other stories, the ones that no one here would know, about Han and Luke and Ben. She wants more time. 

On her left, Finn squeezes her hand as her tears silently overflow her eyes. That’s always the problem. She never has enough time. First with her parents, then with Han, with Luke, with Leia. She lost them all so soon after starting to know them. She clutches Finn’s hand and suddenly regrets her recent animosity towards Poe.

_Force, give me time,_ she thinks, closing her eyes. _Give me the rest of their lives._

_Oh, Rey,_ whispers Leia’s voice. _We’ll always be with you._

Rey’s eyes fly open. She finds nothing but Finn, looking at her in concern. That’s when her sobs begin in earnest, anguish and relief tearing themselves out of her all at once. 

_No one’s ever really gone._

———

After the service, they are brought to a hotel whose owner is apparently very eager to give free lodging to Resistance fighters. Rey, who doesn’t intend to stay here when Ben is on the Falcon, doesn’t even bother going to the room she’s been assigned, instead following Finn back to his. 

“You’re leaving in the morning?” she asks as the door closes.

“Yeah,” he says, toeing off his shoes. Rey sags into the nearest chair, propping her head against one hand. He jumps up onto the end of the bed facing her, bouncing slightly. 

“Where are you going?”

“We’re headed out to the Western Reaches, trying to track down any training cells that are still up and running.” His voice grows quieter. “We figure we have a good chance of finding the younger kids, too.” 

_Younger kids._ Rey’s jaw flexes, but she’s too exhausted to get properly angry. “Good,” she says. 

Apparently her fatigue comes through in her voice, because Finn tilts his head in concern. “You okay?”

She has a splitting headache and her skin feels stretched and tight. She forces a smile. “I’ll be fine,” she says. “I want to get back to the Falcon overnight, check up on things.”

He concedes the point, though likely for very different reasons then hers. “You’ll come tomorrow morning?” 

This smile is more genuine. “Of course. Like I’d just let you leave.”

“Good,” he says. They talk a while longer, then Rey bids him a warm goodbye and heads back to the Falcon. The sunset on Chandrila is a riot of pinks and purples, catching brightly on silvery twists of cloud. She pauses at the base of the Falcon’s gangplank to watch the colors drift closer to violet, and only heads inside when the air grows cold.

D-0 immediately ambushes her, running wild loops around her feet and jabbering so quickly she can hardly make out the words. BB-8 is with Poe, and R2 and C3PO had gone along for the service, leaving the little thing alone all day. Rey leans down to say hello, then gently ushers him off into the body of the ship while she makes her way to Ben’s quarters.

Ben looks the same as ever, not that she had expected anything different. She sits on the edge of the bed and takes his hand.

She comes back to herself minutes later, tears streaming down her face, staring in disbelief as they leak also from the corners of his eyes.

“What?” she whispers.

She reaches down their connection—and oh, he is _there_. Where once there was only confirmation of life, there is now a consciousness. It’s small, and thin, and it feels so fiercely that she is almost sick with it. He must have felt her today, grieving. And now he is grieving too.

She sits there, stunned, watching the drops trace their way up into his hair. Her chest aches with grief and pride and joy, so full she could split open, his and hers tangling, resonating, singing. She thumbs his tears away, wipes her own with the back of her hand. 

“Thank you,” she whispers. “Thank you.”

And though she can’t be certain, she thinks Leia smiles back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My original outline had them going to Ilum. Then I remembered that I hate reading metaphor-laden vision sequences and would definitely hate writing one. The realization that Starkiller was canonically built on Ilum was a therefore a very happy surprise.
> 
> I'll be on vacation from the 28th to the 2nd. I'm going to try and slam out one more chapter tomorrow before we leave, but no promises. In case I don't manage it, see you all in 2020. May the new decade be kinder than the last.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy new year! Meant to post this yesterday but got sidetracked by the poefinn part, which has grown big enough to warrant a spinoff. (Relatedly, if you know any poefinn songs, especially that fit how they’re portrayed in this fic, please suggest them below!)
> 
> Thank you all so much for your lovely comments! There really is no joy like a thoughtful review, and I'm constantly amazed by all your kind words. Thank you all, and I hope you like this one :)

The morning dawns bright and clear, and in short order Rey finds herself at a downtown docking station, watching as final preparations are made for Company 77, Finn, and a handful of others to depart for the Western Reaches. 

Finn is saying, “And if he wakes up an asshole—”

“I’ll keep you updated,” she says.

“No, see, what you’re supposed to say is you’ll smack him upside the head and haul him off to prison.”

“I’ll keep you updated,” she repeats, smiling. 

With a sigh, he pulls her into a hug. She wraps her arms around his ribs and squeezes for dear life.

“Be safe,” she says. She doesn’t quite push the Force into her words, but it’s a near thing.

“You too,” he says. “Don’t forget to call this time.”

She pulls back. “That was one time!”

“And that one time was...” He stops, grip loosening. Rey follows his gaze over her shoulder to the edge of the dock.

Poe Dameron has stopped short to stare, breathing hard as though he just stopped running. He looks awful. His shoulders are sagging, even as his entire body is tense as a bowstring. There are dark circles under his eyes, and his hair is wild as though he rolled out of bed and came straight here—or like he never went to bed at all. 

Rey feels a renewed wave of guilt for the cold shoulder she’s been giving him over the past few days. She can’t say she’d take it back, but she is sorry all the same. 

“I.” says Finn. He’s fingering at the cuff of his jacket, staring right back at Poe. “I’m gonna…”

“Go on,” says Rey. It’s all he needs, striding off along the platform. Rey considers following, but this seems the kind of conversation that ought to happen alone, so she busies herself with helping carry boxes onto the ship. She can’t help sneaking glances though, and keeps careful track of the conversation from a distance. It looks like Poe has some sort of speech prepared. She watches the confrontation drain away from Finn’s shoulders, until Poe presses something into Finn’s hand and hugs him once before vanishing from the platform. 

Finn remains where he is for several moments. When it’s clear he’s not going to move, Rey goes to meet him. From the edge of the platform there is an unobstructed view of Hanna City, gleaming in the early light, the rounded spires of its buildings silhouetted against the rosy sky. Hovercars bustle like gnats between the columns.

“Damn it, Poe,” she hears him mutter.

“Finn?”

He seems to snap back to himself, fingers closing around whatever’s in his hand before she can get a good look at it. 

“I’m fine,” he says. “Are they ready to go?”

“Yes,” she says carefully, wondering if she should ask.

He reads the hesitation off her face. “It’s okay. It’s… it was good, what he said.”

“You’re alright?”

“Yeah,” he says. When he smiles at her it is small, but genuine. “He’s trying. He’s pretty bad at it, but he’s trying.”

Better than she’d feared, not as good as she’d hoped. “Are you going to…”

“Maybe,” he says. “When I get back. I don’t know.” He opens his hand to look down at what Poe gave him. Rey, desperately curious, sneaks a glance. 

“A data chip?” She can’t help being a little disappointed. She’d expected some sort of sentimental trinket, a mother’s necklace or dog tags. “What’s on it?”

“Not sure,” says Finn. He tucks the chip into his pocket. “I think he missed the point a little.” At Rey’s questioning look, he elaborates, “It’s a thing I told him about that troopers do. When you get transferred away from someone you care about, you give them something. Usually practical stuff, like a spare blaster pack or a few rations.”

It’s not so far off from the customs on Jakku, where food and water rations are dear and valuable gifts. “So he gave you a data chip?”

“Like I said, he missed the point.” Finn shrugs, smiling a little. “His heart’s in the right place, though.”

Rey is skeptical, but she gathers from Finn’s expression that there’s some meaning here she’s not privy to.“Let me know what’s on it when you check,” she says finally. 

“What, you invested?” he teases. Rey cuffs him gently on the arm.

“Yes. Obviously. You’ll tell me what it is?”

“I’ll keep you updated,” he says smugly, and ignoring her indignant cry, saunters off back toward the ship.

———

Thirty minutes later sees the Ravana lifting off. Rey watches from the platform as her best friend is carried away to parts unknown, and the tug in her chest that’s been growing for the last several days gives a painful yank. Finn has left her plenty of times over the last year for missions, but their separation has never been more than a few weeks. It will now likely be months before they see each other face to face again. 

There’s a chitter of binary behind her, and she turns to find BB-8 nudging at her leg. She crouches to greet him, then raises her gaze to find Poe. He’s back on the platform, hands in his pockets, staring after the Ravana with naked longing as the ship recedes into the clear sky.

“I thought you’d left,” she says, straightening. 

“Tried,” says Poe. He sounds exhausted. “Couldn’t.”

“Sorry,” she says. 

“It’s fine.”

“I mean I’m sorry. For not talking to you.”

“Oh.” He shrugs, mouth twisting. “Can’t really blame you.”

“Still.”

“Thanks.”

They watch together as the Ravana dwindles in the distance.

“You taking off soon?” he asks.

“Yes,” she says. “Tonight, probably.”

He nods. “Where to?”

“I’m not sure.”

“I assume you’re taking…”

“Yes.”

His face tightens, but all he says is, “Good luck with that.” 

“If you want, you could—”

“Nah,” he says. “I’m needed around here. Galaxy won’t rebuild itself, ya know?”

“Right,” says Rey, relieved. Much as she’d like to have Poe nearby, their particular brand of friendly argument becomes significantly less friendly in extended periods without Finn around. And that’s before accounting for Ben. 

They stand.

“Well,” he says, shifting, “I’ll see y—”

“Are you in love with him?” she blurts, and immediately wishes she could put the words back. Poe flinches, rocks back on his feet. 

“Rey,” he pleads.

“Sorry,” she says. “I shouldn’t—”

“It’s not that simple.”

“I know,” she says, even though she doesn’t. Then, because she can’t help herself, “But he deserves a straight answer.”

“Yeah.” Poe seems to deflate. “He does. I’m working on it.”

Rey studies him. He looks smaller all of a sudden, and incredibly tired. It’s easy to forget that he’s older than her and Finn by nearly a decade, when in so many ways he seems like a boy. 

“That chip you gave him,” she says. “Whatever’s on it, you better mean it.”

“I do,” he says without hesitation. “All of it.”

“Good,” she says. “Figure out the rest before he’s back.”

“Yes, m’am,” he says, flashing her a salute. She hugs him before he can put his arm down. It’s not the best hug she’s ever had—it’s rather awkward, actually, they haven’t really hugged each other before without Finn in the mix—but it’s nice all the same, once he gets with the program.

Eventually she releases him and steps back, straightening her sleeves. “I’ll see you,” she says.

“See you,” he echoes, smiling. “Don’t forget to call.”

“Both of you, honestly, that was _one time_ —”

“Rey,” he interrupts. “I mean it. Call any time.”

_Call if you can’t handle him._

“I’ll be fine,” she says.

“Still,” says Poe. “You need anything, you let me know.”

“Thank you.”

BB-8 whistles forlornly at her knee. “Don’t worry,” she says, crouching. “You’ll see me again. Promise.”

He chirps twice.

“You’ll hardly notice I’m gone,” she assures him. “Be good for Poe, okay?”

A long, trilling warble.

“Of course.” She pats him on the head and stands. “If you need me, just let me know,” she tells Poe.

“I will,” he says. “Thank you, Rey.”

With one last wave, she leaves the platform behind. She looks back only once to find Poe turned away from her and toward the sky, where the Ravana has faded entirely out of sight.

——

Back aboard the Falcon, all is quiet. She, Ben, and D-0 are the only occupants now, and the dull echo of her footsteps through the halls seems loud without the engines active. She can hear D-0 around the bend, single wheel squealing as he zips around in the cargo bay. Ben, when she checks, is silent and still as ever, though his sleeping consciousness murmurs comfortingly at the edge of her mind. 

She settles down in the pilot’s seat, and it suddenly hits her: she is beholden to no one. There is no war, no mission, not even a suggested destination. She has supplies, she has a ship, and she has an entire galaxy. She can go anywhere.

She’s never truly been free before. Even on Jakku, she’d been trapped in place, shackled by her own certainty in her parents’ return. Then the Resistance, and the war, and her training. But now… 

What does she do now?

At least until Ben wakes, she’ll look for a lead on a kyber crystal. Everything will change once he’s back, but that’s fine; she’s in no hurry. She’s hardly looking to rebuild the Jedi just yet. In the meantime, just for something to do, she’ll start looking…

But no, that doesn’t feel right. She doesn't know why, but she's certain; she can't go looking for a crystal yet. On an impulse, she pulls up a map of the galaxy. There’s something else, some feeling. She narrows to an eastern lip of the Mid Rim, then further to the four-world Folis System, until she is left staring inexplicably at a single planet.

“Efre,” she whispers, and the Force ripples. 

It’s a blue and green planet, temperate and beautiful, by all accounts a quiet, sparsely-populated place. It has no strategic value, very little in the way of trade activity, and no action of note in galactic history. A pleasant tourist destination, but not a frequent one. Otherwise, it’s primarily a place for quiet, happy living. 

Somewhere green, she thinks. Somewhere to stay.

Kyber crystals can wait. She sets the course.

———

Calling Efre a blue and green planet is something of a reduction. While it obeys the conventions of the classification, with lush, mostly-green land masses and large bodies of water, any closer inspection of the land reveals a riot of color. Under the deceptive green forest canopy, flowers grow thick at the bases of trees, an underbrush unto themselves. The leaves of bushes have dark green tops and undersides of orange, purple, electric blue. 

Rey follows the tug of the Force across the surface of the planet, skimming the Falcon over its thick forests and twisting rivers, until she finds a break in the tree cover wide enough to land the Falcon three times over. She sets down at the edge of a massive lake, and the roar of the Falcon’s engines sends shallow ripples skittering across the mirrored surface. Then she steps out and looks around.

There is a house by the lake that a single glance shows has been unoccupied for a long time. It’s small, sturdy, a little ugly and painted a horrid shade of murk-yellow, with a halfhearted garden since grown over with a riotous tangle of wild, woody flowers. Beside the house, drooping into the lake, there is a rotting dock and the degraded remains of what may once have been a boat. 

It’s _perfect._

The Force here is a symphony, bolstered by the planet’s teeming life. As Rey walks the house’s dilapidated hallways, tugging at its dry, useless taps and dragging a finger through the coat of dust over its sagging shelves, every step seems to urge it louder. 

_Here,_ it sings. _Here, here, here._

Well. Message received.

The house, it turns out, is only a twenty-minute walk from the nearest town. Rey wanders its streets, buys a few native fruits, marvels at the quiet contentment that rolls off the place in waves. The population is surprisingly diverse for such a relatively remote place; it seems that this area used to be a tourist hotspot before the bigger cities outpaced it, and now it’s become a popular area of settlement for offworlders looking for a change of pace.

With some asking around, she finds herself in a cramped office, where a small, wrinkled Efren woman immediately springs up from behind a cluttered, dusty desk. 

“Please tell me you’re here about the lake house,” she says. She is about half Rey’s height, greenish-yellow with four amber eyes, and when she waddles out from behind the desk Rey sees that her feet are webbed. 

“I am,” says Rey. 

“Really?” The woman blinks, first one set of eyes then the other. “Oh, thank Kuali—I was beginning to think I’d never be rid of it.”

“How much are you selling it for?”

“You can fix it?”

“Yes.”

The woman eyes her skeptically. “Even the plumbing?” 

Rey nods. If there’s anything she knows in this universe, it’s mechanics.

“Then it’s yours.” The woman pulls out a datapad and holds it out to Rey. “Sign this and be done with it.”

Rey blinks. “Really? Just like that?”

“I’ve been trying to sell that place for nearly twenty years now, and every time something’s ended for the worse. As long as you don’t want me to do any fixing, you can have it.” 

Hesitantly, Rey accepts accepts the datapad. “Thank you. It may be a long time before it’s repaired, though. I have some traveling to do.”

The woman pats her briskly on the elbow. “Honestly, dear? I don’t much care, so long as it’s not my problem.”

Rey leaves the establishment the new owner of the lakeside house. She stares down at the documents in her hands, feeling winded and slightly unbalanced. It’s only been twenty hours since she left Chandrila. 

She takes her time on the walk back to the Falcon, lingering in the clean air and humming Force. Efre is so vibrantly alive that the space behind her ribs aches with it. In some ways it’s almost like being back on Ajan Kloss—only, on Ajan Kloss there had always been the consciousness of the war. Even during the week of celebrations, the losses at Exegol were at the forefront of everyone’s minds. Efren, on the other hand, has never been touched by the First Order, and now it never will be. Its land holds no memory of war, and in that absence, Rey can finally breathe.

A life here is so easy to imagine. She sees it as she re-emerges into the grassy clearing, clear as a vision—the house repainted blue, a workshop in the garage, the garden still wild but coaxed into flourishing. Pictures on the walls, the Falcon in the yard, scorches in the grass from saber spars. 

And in all of it, Ben. Ben under the sink cursing at the plumbing. Ben watching the sunrise through the kitchen window. Ben with a new lightsaber, this one without the crackling red crossguard, grinning at her over their crossed blades. Ben, coming slowly down the ramp of the Falcon, upright and so alive.

No, she realizes. That’s not a vision. 

He is unsteady on his feet, weak from days in bed. His face is pale with the effort of keeping himself upright. His Force presence is as wobbly as he is, but it’s full and golden and pulsing with life, and as he stares at her from across the clearing it feels like the first time all over again, staring in stunned recognition across the lightyears, the dawning realization that there is more to the universe than you previously knew. 

Rey skids to a stop at the base of the ramp before she even realizes she is running, panting less from exertion and more from the frantic pounding of her heart. She doesn't know what to do with her hands. There's a shaking where her stomach should be, she's dizzy with it, joy and fear that threaten to shake her loose at the seams. 

“Ben,” she chokes. _Are you here? Is this real?_

He smiles and even though it’s tired it’s the same one as before, that slow, cracking thing, sunlight across his features like the break of dawn. 

“Rey,” he rasps. _I’m here._

She flies up to meet him, and his arms close around her like a wave. The Force is a chorus around them both, reverberant with Light, and as she kisses him like her life depends on it, she feels the rattle of her soul at last begin to settle, complete inside her chest once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :)


End file.
